Guided Mouse-ille

Guided Mouse-ille (or... Science on a Wet Afternoon)
Tom and Jerry series

Title card
Directed by Abe Levitow
Produced by Chuck Jones
Story by John W. Dunn
Voices by Mel Blanc (uncredited)
June Foray (uncredited)
Music by Eugene Poddany
Animation by Phil Roman
Ben Washam
Ken Harris
Don Towsley
Dick Thompson
Tom Ray
Studio Sib Tower 12 Productions
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s) March 10, 1967
Color process Metrocolor
Running time 7:00
Language English
Preceded by O-Solar Meow
Followed by Rock 'n' Rodent

Guided Mouse-ille (or Science on a Wet Afternoon) is a 1967 Tom and Jerry cartoon, produced by Chuck Jones and directed by Abe Levitow. It was the second of three space-age Tom and Jerry shorts to be released in the Chuck Jones era (along with O-Solar Meow and Advance and Be Mechanized), though taking a look at the MPAA code at the beginning of the cartoon would suggest that Guided Mouse-ille (or Science on a Wet Afternoon) was the first of the three cartoons to be produced. According to episode number, It is the last Tom and Jerry cartoon to feature music by Eugene Poddany (both regarding ones produced by Chuck Jones/Sib Tower 12, and also regarding Tom and Jerry cartoons altogether). However, O-Solar Meow could be the last specific cartoon according to the MPAA code to be produced. The cartoon was animated by Don Towsley, Tom Ray, Dick Thompson, Ben Washam, Ken Harris and Philip Roman, with music by Eugene Poddany and backgrounds by Thelma Witmer.

The title is a pun on "Guided missile" and Séance on a Wet Afternoon. Chuck Jones had previously used a "guided missile" pun for Guided Muscle, a Warner Bros. cartoon in the Looney Tunes series featuring Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner.

Plot

The camera zooms right towards a Space Age facility as the title cards are shown. The year is shown to be 2565 AD.

Jerry pushes levers on his control panel and an image of a wheel of cheese materializes on the monitor. Jerry calls in robot-Jerry (which looks like a truncated yellow pencil) and gives him his mission. Robot-Jerry speeds through the hallways and ends up breaking an electric eye; this is Tom's signal for a "law-breaker" invasion. Lights and sound activate, but Tom is still sleeping. An alarm clock pops out and rings; this wakes the cat up. Tom sees robot-Jerry and calls in Mechano , a blue, jet-powered, but still resembling Tom, machine. Tom gives the robotic feline his mission and it then speeds off.

Jerry sees the robot-cat on the monitor and frantically messes with the control panel. Robot-Jerry stops, sniffs, and turns around in a sequence before Mechano can eat him. Both of them speed through the hall. Mechano attempts to eat robot-Jerry a second time, but robot-Jerry levitates himself into the air. Mechano extends his legs up and tries again, but then robot-Jerry drops himself. Mechano crouches to avoid a large fixture, and then extends himself high to avoid a second one. Mechano lowers himself a tiny bit and grins, but soon runs into an overhang. Robot-Jerry speeds through while Mechano is left fuming. Robot-Jerry speeds past and this reactivates Mechano, who chases robot-Jerry for a third time. Jerry pulls a lever and robot-Jerry starts moving at superspeed, leaving Mechano astonished. Tom then applies the same feature for Mechano. Tom sees robot-Jerry approaching his monitor and coming out of the bottom of his computer, and looks at the disappearing machine. He turns his eyes back to the monitor to see Mechano crashing through the screen and causing destruction in the room. A dazed Tom whacks the still-active head of Mechano to knock him out.

Tom has repaired his computer and the monitor shows Jerry victorious, having secured his cheese. Tom suddenly gets an idea and steps into a cylinder-like room, an invisibility chamber. He presses a button which renders him invisible. Tom walks towards Jerry's hole with a space weapon and knocks on the wall. Jerry, however, darts out in a space vehicle and squirts the cat with ink, turning Tom red, leaving him visible and vulnerable to attack again. Tom tries to shoot the mouse as revenge, but Jerry shoots the cat first and then renders him invisible again. Paramedics immediately come out and load the invisible Tom onto a stretcher.

Tom then directs Mechano wielding a gun to take care of the mouse. He knocks on the mouse hole and Jerry pops out in his vehicle. Before Mechano can get the chance to pull the trigger, Jerry plugs the gun and it explodes, blackening his head, causing his head and rear to burst out of their sockets. Mechano cries for a moment and returns by creeping up behind Tom in anger. Tom sees only the gun in the monitor before he gets shot. Offended, he takes the weapon and tries to shoot Mechano for his insubordination. However, the shot comes out the wrong end, Tom is blasted again, and he is knocked out from the blast. Mechano then laughs himself silly at what just happened, his master's revenge unexpectedly transformed into backfire.

Jerry is now traveling across the floor in his vehicle, his eyes on a large wheel of cheese on the counter. Tom comes from behind in a magnetic crane and attracts Jerry's vehicle up to the magno-pad. Jerry exits his vehicle in a parachute, unplugs the crane's magno-pad from its power source sending his own vehicle falling and then Tom comes out with a hammer, ready to squash the mouse. Jerry then plugs the magno-pad back in and the hammerhead comes off the handle and sticks to the pad, and then he unplugs it and it falls on Tom's head. Tom brims with anger as a bump forms on his head, but then Jerry repeats this Before Tom can throttle him. Jerry does it for a third time, and Tom pleads with the mouse not to follow through, but Jerry unplugs the pad anyway and Tom gets bumped again. Jerry uses his new-found attack in a sequence until Tom is seen crushed to the floor, 1/3 of Jerry's height and crying at the mouse's feet. Jerry lets the cat go, and then shrugs.

A large and complex mathematical-chemical equation with =Mc3 (kaboom!) is shown on a blackboard and Tom is seen making a large quantity of explosive potion based on it, hoping that it will annihilate Jerry once and for all once installed into the bomb. The camera cuts to Jerry, who sees Tom on his monitor, and is compressing the wheel of cheese into a tiny amount of a highly volatile liquid. He fills a projectile with it, flies nabove Tom in a gunboat, and drops the microbomb into the potion. Tom quizzically points into the vat....and then a big explosion occurs.

When the smoke clears, time has reversed itself to the Stone Age because of Jerry's invention of the highly explosive liquid. Tom, who is now a cavecat walks out of a cave with a club and soon sees Jerry, also a cavemouse and licking on a bone. He attempts to whack the mouse, but Jerry shows him the bone, which they share. As they both share it Tom accidentally licks Jerry and then goes "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!" before he tries to eat Jerry, who escapes from Tom, and another chase begins, which causes the viewers to think that the chase is the last chase from the future (while the big bang may have destroyed Tom and Jerry in the future) and the first chase in the Stone Age as "THE END" is shown, and then three question marks pop up.

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